


mis(fortune)

by ilgaksu



Series: not just good business [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Catholicism, Iwachan's Embarrassing Bodyguard Crush, Lev doesn't deserve a card but gets one anyway, M/M, Multi, Oikawa Overworks (What's New), Other, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sad about the Mob, Tarot, Tarot Card Metaphors, Tarot Cards, Tooru no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 16:24:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4673447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>What do you want</i>, Hajime had asked him last night, dressing at the foot of Oikawa’s bed to slip out with the dawn, eyes huge and solemn and dark, hymnal eyes. <i>What do you want from me?</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p><i>Everything</i>, Oikawa had said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mis(fortune)

Oikawa sits at his father’s fancy marble table in his father’s fancy uptown apartment, and does what every eldest of his family has done for decades: he takes the city. He takes it, and it tastes like whisky drying sticky on his lips and feels like watching the factories down by the docks crank up the pace. He’s got to keep up. He’s always managed it so far. He’s just got to do it one more time.

 

_What do you want,_ Hajime had asked him last night, dressing at the foot of Oikawa’s bed to slip out with the dawn, eyes huge and solemn and dark, hymnal eyes. _What do you want from me?_

 

_Everything,_ Oikawa had said, and Hajime had laughed under his breath.

 

_Just the usual, then._ And he’d put his spine back into being Oikawa’s bodyguard, and Oikawa had gone to get the cards. There are some routines we cut ourselves into like grooves on a record, expected and inescapable. When it gets light outside, Iwachan transforms back into Iwaizumi, a reverse fairy tale; when it gets light outside, Hajime closes the door behind him and Oikawa goes to get his cards.

 

Oikawa doesn’t believe in fairy tales, anyway; and he’s not sure that if they did exist, people like them have any right to try and write themselves into the wedding at the end. _Tell sad stories of the death of kings_ when crown and heart both ring hollow; when it gets light outside, Oikawa goes to get his cards.

 

Nobody else in Aoba Josai will touch the tarot cards; they see Oikawa laying them out in the pearl-grey morning, faint steam rising from the coffee by his side, and make the sign of the Cross, call on Santa Maria to forgive their boss’ doll-eyed, dead-eyed heir. Oikawa ignores them. Forgiveness does not come from on high, for in order to believe it does Oikawa must subscribe to a belief in his own sin; Oikawa has done enough in the dark to know flesh and bone can burn in hellfire long before St. Peter gets a say. Nobody else will touch the cards, and that’s precisely why he uses them. The less people dare to look, the less people see.

 

He lays them out one by one. First of all, The Tower, upright. _Ambitions built on false premises._ Kuroo Tetsurou. Once one of Aoba Josai’s runners, before he and Kenma got the backing to splinter off under their own name. Once one of Aoba Josai’s runners, always one of Aoba Josai’s runners. Oikawa isn’t sure if Kuroo’s gotten that part yet, but he’s learning to. The war did half of Oikawa’s work for him; Kuroo’s more likely to guard his own than ever before, and it leaves chinks in his armour that gape wider than a wound. It makes, Kenma makes, Kuroo easy to pin down. Strength, upright. _Determination._ Kozume Kenma. The nails in Kuroo Tetsurou’s coffin in milk soap hands. Oikawa may not like acknowledging it publicly, but he gives power in the cards where power’s due. He tucks The Tower and Strength together, places The Lovers over. His own private joke. Iwa-chan doesn’t find it funny, but Oikawa thinks Iwa-chan is too serious for his own good, will ruin his skin with wrinkles by the time he’s thirty. He takes out the Judgement card for Haiba Lev, one son of a Mafia don acknowledging the other as was Haiba’s due, and laughs before he puts it down upright below Kenma and Kuroo.

 

Next to them, he places Death, upright. _Endings, beginnings, transformation_. Bokuto Koutarou. Oikawa can’t figure out where he came from and his informants have found sparse pickings, but in six years he’d risen to leadership of his own gang. That is problematic. That is troublesome. That requires a closer eye. He places Death close to Nekoma’s cards. Bokuto is weak for his friends, and it shows in the soft eyes that belied every sarcastic barb thrown. He will play them in sync, together rather than against; it would be difficult to turn them against each other, he suspects, although not impossible. Bring Kenma into play, bring Bokuto in opposite and Kuroo would be torn in two.

 

Oikawa smiles.

 

Next card. The Emperor, upright. _Structure, solid foundation._ Daichi Sawamura. Slides it to Kuroo’s right side, the way he tends towards sitting in meetings. There’s a reason Oikawa allows them to choose their own seats. It allows for an observation of dynamics and preferences, minute and telling. Karasuno’s speakeasy is a far cry from the days thirty years ago, when the Little Giant roamed the streets and the law barely left a scratch on his hide, but it’s a modern era. Times change and even gods can be tripped from their perches. It’s all, Oikawa thinks, in the timing. Peels out Temperance, upright. _Balance, moderation._ Sugawara Koushi. Placed close and closer to The Emperor. More of a threat than anticipated on first glance. Mr. Refreshing over at the speakeasy had made a fiction out of appearing pretty and harmless and Oikawa wasn’t getting tangled up in what Sugawara was spinning. A threat is a threat is a threat. Oikawa hesitates, then roughly yanks the Moon card out and slams it down on the table, directly below Sugawara and Sawamura. A threat is a threat is a threat, however odious, however infuriating, however brilliant.

 

He hears a familiar laugh and looks up, already curling his mouth into a pout.

 

“Iwa-chan,” he whines, pitching his voice at the most annoying timbre possible. “Don’t laugh at me.”

 

“I’ll stop laughing,” Iwa-chan says, light and easy, “When you stop being a fishwife hunched over your fortune.” He leans his forearms on the marble of the table and raises his eyebrows. His eyes are dark and serious and Oikawa loves him more fiercely than anything, a lion cub rage of it that aches. “You should go back to bed and rest.”

 

“Early bird catches the worm, Iwachan,” Oikawa hums under his breath, sticking his tongue out. Iwa-chan sighs, and opens his mouth to say something more, before Oikawa cuts him off. “The bed’s cold, anyway.” He looks down at the table for a full three seconds before feeling brave enough to glance back up at Iwa-chan. Iwa-chan’s eyes are always far too knowing for their own good. One day someone might put them out.

 

Then again, probably not. Oikawa would flay them first.  

 

“You know I can’t,” Iwa-chan huffs, mouth twisting. “You can’t make the rules for us, this, and then break them, Trashykawa. That’s not how this works. That’s not how we can work.”

 

“That’s exactly what I always do,” Oikawa snaps in return. “I’m remaking this place in my own image.”

 

“Pretty sure God said that, not you.”

 

“I’m improving on him,” Oikawa says firmly, and Iwa-chan half-laughs, half-frowns. God is a sore spot for them, still. That’s okay. Oikawa’s working on it. Oikawa’s gonna work on it until it’s perfect.

 

But until then, he smiles long and slow and watches Iwa-chan’s eyes track his mouth, hypnotised, like he can’t help it. He doesn’t even try to fight, not when it comes to this.  

 

“You’re so easy, Iwa-chan,” he murmurs, voice dropping, and Iwa-chan flushes. Holds eye contact. Doesn’t shy away. Iwa-chan never shies away.

 

Oikawa amends his earlier statement. He would flay someone alive.

 

He’s yet to pick out a card for Akaashi that he deems appropriate, but he’s waiting to see how Bokuto’s little infatuation with their accountant plays out. Puppy love makes him earnest; Oikawa wonders if that will bleed over into business. Blood and love don’t mix; grow up in the mob and that part’s cut into your bones. The final card for the final player glints up at him from the top of the pack as he collates them all carefully back into the place. But Iwa-chan is waiting for him, with those eyes that say you can hide here, and Oikawa is very tired.

 

He leaves The World card upright on the table, stacked neatly atop the pack. He goes where Iwa-chan leads, and Iwa-chan pretends to follow.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

>  _Tell sad stories of the death of kings_ is a line from Shakespeare's Richard II. 
> 
> Bonus points if you can guess who the Moon and World cards are in reference to.
> 
> [if you can't save me from this au come talk to me about it](ilgaksu.tumblr.com)
> 
>  


End file.
